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3/25/11

Michelle Rhee Makes A Dubious Claim

Americans also have strong opinions about how we should determine teacher quality. In fact, of the 1,510 voters surveyed, 75 percent believe standardized tests, individual student progress and principal assessments are the best ways to evaluate teachers.

Really? Who were these voters? How were they chosen? What was the method used to get the opinions? Can we have any information about your survey at all, like the wording of the questions?

Michelle Rhee's site -- studentsfirst.org -- was at first happy to have comments on her blog. When the comments got overwhelmingly negative about the direction Rhee would like to see education go, they began deleting offending comments. Then they reposted some positive comments and attributed them to others. Then they began to moderate all comments, which pretty much shut down any conversations that were happening, and there were some, and people's minds were changing.